In 2017 I got all five of my kids after Child Welfare Services removed them from their mother.

We moved into a six-hundred-square-foot apartment. Four kids shared one bedroom. Rocco and I slept in the living room. One bathroom for all of us.

And one afternoon, I hit a wall. I was overwhelmed and angry and sad all at once, and I did the only thing there was to do in that apartment — I went into the bathroom, locked the door, and sat down on the toilet. Not because I needed the bathroom. Because it was the only door in the world I could close.

I wanted to cry. I wanted to put my fist through the wall. I wanted anything that would get me out of the state I was in.

And then the kids started banging on the door. When are you coming out?

There was no peace in that apartment and no solution I could see. Nowhere to go, no money to fix it, no version of the next hour that looked any different than this one.

And then something came to me — a thought I’d been circling for a while but had never actually used when it counted.

There are no problems. There’s only life — and the story in my head about it. And that story isn’t me. I’m the one listening to it.

Let me back up, because that thought didn’t come from nowhere.

I was about forty years old when I read Michael Singer’s The Untethered Soul, and he wrote about the voice in your head. And I want to tell you how strange this is: I had been introspective my whole life. I was interested in people, in psychology, in why we do what we do. I would have told you I knew myself well.

And I had never once considered that the voice in my head might not be me.

I can’t fully explain what that did. Forty years of assuming that the running commentary — the worry, the criticism, the replaying, the rehearsing — was me, was my actual self, and then suddenly a crack of light: what if that’s something I’m listening to…..something I observe?

Here’s the simplest way I know to say it. A knife cannot cut itself. An eye cannot see itself. And you cannot observe the thing you are — you can only observe something you’re separate from.

So if you can sit back and notice the thoughts in your head — there’s the anger, there’s the worry, there’s that same old story again — then those thoughts cannot be you. Something is watching them. And that something is what you actually are.

There’s the guy named Chad, in this body he was given, with a brain and a heart that do their jobs. And sometimes, based on what’s happened to him or what someone said or how the day went, that Chad guy gets upset, feels disrespected, feels unappreciated, spins out. That’s all real.

And then there’s the one who can watch all of that happening.

That watcher — that’s the you underneath. That’s the part of you that has never been damaged by any of this, no matter what any of this has cost you. It has been there your entire life, quietly behind everything, and most of us go our whole lives without noticing it once.

Back to the bathroom.

Sitting there with my kids pounding on the door, I walked myself down that path. This is a story. I am the one hearing and observing the story. Which means I have a choice about what I do with it.

And one of the choices — this was the new part for me — is to simply not pick it up. To let the thought be there and not attach to it, not follow it down the hall, not build the next twenty minutes out of it.

So I did a gratitude list in my head. But not the usual kind. Someone once taught me: if you’re really struggling, list everything you want to still have tomorrow — and understand that anything you don’t list will be gone.

So I started. My kids. The bed. Sheets. A pillow. Clothes. Food. The floor under my feet. The walls. The door I was sitting behind. Running water. Every single one of my children in the next room.

And it landed on me all at once: holy smokes, I have so much.

Nothing about the apartment had changed. Still six hundred square feet. Still four kids in one room. Still one bathroom. Still no money.

I opened the door and hugged my kids. I had gone in wanting out, and I came out wanting in. My whole spirit shifted. Not because my life got better. Because I stopped being the story about my life for a few minutes and became the one watching it instead. The watcher exists only in the present moment. In the present moment, there are no problems.

Now — how do you actually get to that watcher on purpose, instead of stumbling into it on a bathroom floor?

That’s one of the ways you can benefit from meditation. And I have to be honest with you about it, because most people sell it wrong.

I was never a meditator. In theory, I liked the idea. In practice, if you’d asked me to sit still and follow my breath for five minutes, I’d have told you that sounded like a form of torture. And when I first started, that’s exactly what it was. One minute felt endless. It was uncomfortable and boring, and I was sure I was getting nothing out of it. What is the point of this?

Here’s the parallel that finally made sense of it for me.

When I first started running, I thought I was experiencing everything running had to offer. It was hard. It hurt. The next day, I was so sore that every step was miserable. That was running, as far as I knew.

And then one day, somewhere out on a run, I noticed I had stopped thinking. Miles had clipped away without my painstaking commentary in my head. Something had shifted — I was in some kind of flow state, and I went further than I’d planned, and it was easier, and there was a peace in it. Nobody could have described that to me. I wouldn’t have believed them. You only know it by crossing into it.

Meditation was the same. Torturous minute. Torturous week. And then one day I was sitting at an event, dreading a meditation I assumed was going to be too long and pointless — and my head just shut off. An hour went by, and it felt like less than five minutes. Eventually, I sat for a six-hour meditation. Six hours. It went by faster than you’d believe, and I’m the guy who thought five minutes was cruel and unusual.

So here’s what I’d say to you, and it’s the least glamorous advice you’ll ever get: the first stretch does suck, and that’s not a sign you’re doing it wrong. It’s the sore-legs phase. There’s a threshold on the other side that nobody can describe to you, and you can’t take on faith. You can only walk to it.

Start with one minute. Not twenty. One. Sit down, close your eyes, and notice that there is a voice in there talking — and that you are the one observing it.

That’s it. That’s the whole practice. You’re not trying to stop the thoughts. You’re just changing seats — from being the thoughts, to watching them.

You’re allowed to do it on a bathroom floor with your kids banging on the door. That’s where I found it. Or if you have the luxury, get out in nature and find a place to sit.

I’ll see you next week.

If this landed, follow along — I write every Monday, for the parent carrying more than anyone sees.